MR. HOLDER: Good afternoon. We are here
today because the House of Representatives has
begun a debate on legislation that can make a
critical difference to law enforcement and to the
safety of all Americans.

Today individual members of Congress have
a clear cut choice to make. Either they can cave
into the narrow, special interests that value the
cold, hard steel of guns more than the lives of
children, neighbors and police officers; or they
can fulfill the broad mandate -- fulfill a mandate
of a broad majority of the American people by
supporting this reasonable, common sense bill that
will make all of us safer from harm of criminals.

The choice for each House member cannot
be more stark.

As most of you know, I served as a judge,
as the chief prosecutor for the District of
Columbia and for the past two years as the Deputy
Attorney General. I know the harm that guns can do
to individuals, to families and also to
communities.

My concern about easy access to guns in
our society is built on my professional experience
and the tragedies that I have encountered in my
workday life.

But even more important, I am a father
and I want to be sure that we here in Washington do
everything we can, everything that is in our power
to make our communities and our schools and our
nation a safer place for our kids.

Five years ago Congress came together in
a bipartisan way and passed one of the most
important gun control measures ever passed, the
Brady Bill.

Yesterday the President announced that
since all went into effect more than 400,000
criminals and others who are not legally eligible
to have guns have been stopped from buying guns.
Four hundred thousand, that is a lot of guns,
particularly if those guns were in the hands of
fugitives or felons.

But while the Brady Law has done a lot to
make this country safer, the law has some dangerous
loopholes that criminals and others who cannot
legally buy guns at a licensed gun shop exploit.

While everyone who buys a gun through a
licensed dealer must undergo a background check to
determine if they are eligible to buy a gun, the
current law allows unlicensed sellers at gun shows
to sell to anyone with no questions asked. And it
is not hard to see what kind of message that sends
to criminals.

But it is hard for me to believe that any
reasonable person, including those who serve in
Congress, could oppose taking the simple step
necessary to close that gap.

Last month the Senate passed a bill that
does close the loophole. And this week the House
has an opportunity to join them in this very
logical decision. This should be an easy decision;
but for many members, it will not.

Because of the pressure they are under
from the NRA, we must urge Congress to resist the
gun lobby's pressure to vote for the sham gun
control being pressed on the House.

The bill does nothing to plug the gaping
loophole in the Brady Law. In fact, it actually
creates new loopholes and weakens the protections
that are currently in place.

Let me give you a couple of examples of
what's wrong with it. The bill now with the
definition of gun shows would exclude many events
where large numbers of guns are sold, such as flea
markets. Even worse for the guns that it does
cover, the bill weakens the current law by cutting
down the amount of time law enforcement has to
complete three background checks from three working
days to 72 hours. Now, let me be clear about what
this means.

For approximately 73 percent of gun
buyers, a background check is completed and they
are allowed to buy their gun within minutes.

Ninety-five percent of all buyers who
have had their check completed, get to their gun
within two hours.

But for the tiny percentage of buyers for
whom the Instant Check System receives a whole
message, more time is needed.

This is because court records are needed
to provide additional information and those court
records sometimes can take days to access. They
certainly cannot be accessed on weekends when most
gun shows take place. And we now know that those
purchasers who do not receive a quick go ahead are
more likely to turn out to be prohibited
purchasers.

In fact, data from the FBI's National
Instant Check System shows that Saturday gun buyers
whose check cannot be completed within 24 hours are
20 times more likely to be prohibited people than
the average gun buyer.

The FBI has also estimated the impact a
72-hour limit would have if it had been in place
for the last six months. And the results to me are
chilling.

If law enforcement had 72 hours instead
of three working days, more than 9,000 felons and
other prohibited purchasers would have gotten guns.
Another recently offered amendment is even worse.
It cuts the time to 24 hours, which translates to
17,000 prohibited purchasers who would not have
been stopped from buying deadly weapons in the last
six months.

And let me just tell you about a few of
these people, who they are.

Among those stopped under the law we now
have were a convicted murderer in Texas, a rapist
in Wisconsin, a convicted child molester and a
person currently under indictment for aggravated
assault with a deadly weapon.

Had a 24-hour time limit been in place,
each one of these dangerous criminals would have
slipped through the system and would have been sold
a gun.

I don't know about you. But I sure
wouldn't want to have to tell the parent of the
child lost to gun violence that the purchaser of
the gun used in the crime could have been stopped
from buying the gun if only law enforcement had had
another day to pull their records, or if only the
dealer at the gun show would have been required to
run a background check.

It is these parents that Congress should
think about while considering the legislation
before them.

Over the past two months we have heard
from the American people that they want those of us
in Washington to lead and to pass real measures
that protect our communities and that protect our
kids.

We saw this in the bipartisan support the
Senate received for the common sense measures that
it passed last month. The House now has the option
to consider an equally sensible bill.

Representatives McCarthy, Roukema and
Blagojevich have offered a bipartisan amendment
that is based upon the Senate passed gun show
measures, but has been modified specifically to
address concerns expressed by some who thought that
the Senate provisions went too far.

It closes the gun show loophole but does
nothing that would present any obstacles to
law-abiding citizens seeking to purchase guns at
gun shows or anywhere else.

This is not about politics, partisan or
otherwise. This should not be about the narrow,
misguided special interests.

This is about public safety, this is
about our children.

I call upon those members in the House to
talk to the families that have been ripped apart by
violence and to reflect on the historic opportunity
that they now have to stop other families from
experiencing similar tragedies.

Now, with me today is Rachel Thompson, a
survivor of a school shooting in Seattle. She was
wounded by a fellow student with a nine millimeter
semi-automatic pistol.

Also with me is Edward Flynn, the Chief
of Police of Arlington County, Virginia.

MS. THOMPSON: Hi. My name is Rachel
Thompson and I am here with Mothers Against
Violence in America to get my story across. I'm 19
years old. And when I was 15 years old I was shot
in my school.

There was an argument. A kid went home,
got his gun that he had stolen from his
grandfather's glove compartment of his truck. And
if you ask me, that is no place to keep a loaded
gun.

He came into school, shot off 13 rounds.
And I was struck in the knee as I was trying to run
out. This scares me so much that it has happened
so many times after me. I was four and a half
years ago and these stories keep on repeating
themselves.

My school was lucky that nobody got shot
but it is a shame that in America today that I am
considered lucky.

I was shot in school. That is, I think,
about the most worst thing I can ever think of
doing. And my heart goes out to everybody in
schools who has had to deal with this in their
school.

And, you know, there is fear in American
children today in school. All you have to do is
lock up your gun and it is not that hard.

And what we're trying to pass here is
saving our children. It is not about your rights;
it is about children. And it is about keeping them
safe and sending them to school where they feel
like they can conduct everyday life without
worrying about it.

That's my message. And I try to get it
out to everybody because I feel like it started
with me. And I want it to stop with me. And I'm
here to do anything I can to make it stop.

This is Edward Flynn, Chief of Police
from Arlington, Virginia -- County.

MR. FLYNN: Good afternoon. In addition
to my responsibilities as the Police Chief in
Arlington County, I'm on the legislative chair of
the Police Executive Research Forum, otherwise
known an PERF.

PERF is a national organization of
progressive police professionals who are dedicated
to improving police services to all members of our
communities.

I know that my fellow PERF chiefs join me
in urging the House to pass reasonable gun control
laws.

Police know, adequate background checks,
safety devices, measures that keep guns out of the
hands of troubled children and others are needed
now.

We witness daily the devastation and
tragedy left in the wake of gun violence.

Police know that gun availability is not
the sole source of gun violence.

But I can tell you that keeping guns out
of the hands of disturbed children, criminals and
others who are bent on doing harm to themselves and
others is just good sense.

I don't need to quote you the numbers on
gun related injuries and deaths. We all know that
they are far too high.

Efforts are currently underway in the
House that would undermine even the modest gun
control measures recently passed by the Senate.

I would like someone to explain to the
police why such reasonable steps are being thwarted
and then explain it to the children too scared to
go to school and to the citizens in my jurisdiction
who live in fear of gun violence.

PERF and other police professionals urged
the Congress to reject Congressman Dingell's
background checks amendment that would give us only
24 hours to conduct background checks instead of
the three days allowed by the recently passed
Senate bill. We know that most checks can take
only a few minutes, usually a few hours to
complete.

But when a background check is delayed
more than a few hours, it is because we detect a
potential problem with the purchaser's eligibility.

The FBI estimates that if a 24-hour cut
off rule had been applied to all Instant Checks
over the last six months, more than 17,000
prohibited buyers would have gotten guns.

Another measure we must not undermine is
the gun show amendments that close current
loopholes in the law.

There are an estimated 5,000 gun shows
annually in our nation at which private gun sales
are not subject to waiting periods or background
checks for the purchasers, unless the seller is a
federally licensed firearms dealer.

To close the loopholes that are exploited
by sellers who operate full-fledged businesses but
are not federal firearms licensees, we urge you to
support background checks for any event at which
more 50 guns were sold as was done in the Senate.

Under pending House proposal, if
thousands of guns are sold by under 10 dealers, the
gun show background provisions would not be
applied.

Police oppose this effort that thwart the
Senate proposal. And we support the efforts of
Representatives McCarthy, Roukema and -- I'm sorry.

PERF helped write the handgun safety
guidelines issued to most police agencies more than
a decade ago on the need to secure handguns kept in
the home.

We are urging Congress to clarify that
the storage containers and safety mechanisms meet
minimum standards to assure that the requirements
have teeth.

There are many other provisions on which
PERF police chiefs feels strongly. But most of
all, it's ironic that as the House calls for faster
gun control checks, the Senate appropriators have
failed to include the requested fee to fund the
cost of Brady Handgun National Instant Check
System, nor provide sufficient FBI funding to
operate the NICS System to perform these necessary
checks.

PERF and other police chiefs like myself
welcome the opportunity to work with Congress on
effective gun control measures that will respect
the rights of law-abiding citizens but also save
their lives. Thank you.

MR. HOLDER: I'll take a few questions,
if anybody has any.

QUESTION: Mr. Holder, you were
apparently on Capitol Hill this morning meeting
with House members, primarily conservative
democrats, as I understand it.

How did it go? What were they telling
you? What are you thinking is going to happen?

MR. HOLDER: I thought the meeting
actually went pretty well. And I think they were
kind of surprised by some of the statistics that I
shared with you about what the effect of the
legislation that is being considered would have of
the 17,000 to 9,000.

I think people are -- at least some
people up there are dealing without sufficient
amounts of information to make this very difficult
choice.

And what we are trying to do is to get to
as many people as we can with the facts so that
they can make an informed decision.

I really believe that once armed with
these facts, all the reasonable people up there
will see the administration's view that the
attempts to weaken that which the Senate has
passed, are simply misguided and just not good for
this country.

QUESTION: How many democrats support
Dingell's amendment, do you think?

MR. HOLDER: I don't really know, to be
honest.

QUESTION: Fifty? Sixty?

MR. HOLDER: I don't know. I think that
number is too high, but I don't know.